Friday, March 31, 2017

My husband has rather suddenly become seriously deaf, adding
another layer of stress to lives (his and mine) which already had plenty. He’ll
have his ears syringed on Monday.

But knitting went well. I knit a whole 17-round border from
the Museum Sweater into my swatch-scarf, and I like the result a lot. It’s
rather subdued, but I am adding what I am sure would be called a pop of colour
in the peerie pattern. Just as the
original does, although a different colour. I’ve charted another lozenge
(chosen at random), again with difficulty. I mean to press on and knit it over
the weekend, offset and with the order of the colours reversed, as in the
original.

And then I’ll show it to you.

The lozenges are all exactly the same shape, so the “X” part
of the design is identical every time. It is just the internal pattern in the
lozenges that changes. I found knitting much easier than charting, as I thought
it might be. Hazel Tindall said that charting is a good way to get to know a
pattern before you start – that could be why the knitting seemed easier when I
got to it.

Another thing she said, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned,
is that she carries floats across five stitches (or, of course, fewer) and only
thinks of weaving-in for six or more. I always used to weave even, I think, for
three. But it is not much use paying for a class with Hazel Tindall if you are
not going to pay attention to what she says, so I am now letting the floats
float. I am pleased and rather surprised to find that my hands remember the
slightly complicated moves for weaving in the right-hand yarn when there is a
run of too many consecutive stitches from the left hand. The other way around,
of course, is easy peasy.

Mary Lou, Ravelry presented me with “Guy’s Vest” under “Friends’
Activity” without my having to make any effort. It’s beautiful. And I see you’ve
edged neck and sleeve openings with a peerie pattern. Is that hard? I wonder if
I’ve got WG 54.

But I keep having to make a certain amount of effort to get
to the other Raveller, besides Maureen, who has knit the Museum Sweater (to
look at his pictures again). He’s a man, and his user-name is an utterly
unmemorable combination of letters and numbers. I go to Maureen’s project page,
always a pleasure, find the Museum Sweater, go to its page, click on “In 2
projects”.

I didn’t know, in my previous Fair Isle Phase several
decades ago, all this business about a dominant colour when you are carrying a
yarn in each hand. I always used to look at the pattern before I started each
round, and use my right hand for whichever colour, pattern or background, had
the most work to do. Now I’m doing it the proper way, and it does help a bit to keep confusion at
bay to know that the pattern colour is always in the left hand.

Southern Gal (comment Wednesday), your explanation of how to
get things into Evernote seemed perfectly comprehensible even without a desk
for you to write it at. Thank you. It really is enormously useful, and I must
use it more.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

No trouble from the inplant. No pain-killers today.

And it was a good day’s knitting, too. I’ve finished the
third skein of Tannehill, wound the fourth and attached it, knit an inch and a
half or so with the new skein. I’m now well more than halfway from underarm to
shoulder on the back.

I think that entitles me to pick up the swatch-scarf
tomorrow. I’ve finished charting the Museum Sweater (using the lozenge pattern
which is illustrated most clearly on Ravelry) and have had some trouble trying
to colour it in with pencils. Something to do with the way colours change
roles, from background to pattern.

I think I’ll plunge in and see if I can knit it anyway.

Tannehill is going so well that I found myself idly thinking
Next Project today. I won’t do anything about it until Tannehill is finished,
or very nearly so, but it’s fun to think. Mary Lou’s Polliwog Popover, from “Drop
Dead Easy Knits”, is in the lead at the moment, what with all these babies
about and it would be nice to do something quick and, well, drop-dead easy
AND I bought the yarn for it at the EYF.

What possessed me? I can’t imagine any of us wearing it –
well, just possibly one of James’ and Cathy’s daughters. And I think I would
prefer it with positive ease and shorter sleeves, so that it could be worn over
a shirt. I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Loes
Veenstra, the Dutch woman who knit over 500 sweaters and put them all
carefully away, unworn.

In this case I think I started with buying a set of gradient
skeins from Kathy’s Knits, feeling I ought to buy something because I had been
taking up space on her sofa day after day. And then one day going to visit the
Ginger Twist Studio and feeling I ought to buy something, full stop, as I would
feel in a small, independent book store.

But a whole sweater?

The gradient skeins and the Ginger Twist yarn are both very
nice, and go beautifully together. But the gradient
skeins don't add up to enough yardage to replace the contrast colour in the crazy stripes pattern, and the maker, easyknits.co.uk, isn’t offering them in my colours at
the moment. I could go back to Kathy and see if she still has them. Probably
not.

Veenstra knit with what she had, and what people gave her,
and improvised her patterns.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The implant wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. In fact, the
worst bit was probably the preliminary night’s anxiety. I took things easy
today – ready-meal for supper, lots more Tannehill. I’ve left off the
pain-killers already, although I may take one at bedtime.

Tomorrow I am to start a week’s course of a precautionary antibiotic.
I am not meant to consume alcohol while taking it, so it is rather a good thing
that this is happening in Lent.

I divided the Tannehill front and back, and have finished
the underarm decreases for the back. I should finish the current (third) skein
tomorrow with ease. I didn’t do anything further about charting the Museum
Sweater, however, which leaves me with little or nothing to say to you.

AnnP, the Tech Knitter is brilliant on corrugated ribbing.
Many thanks for that. I’ve tucked it away in Evernote, a program I haven’t
visited in quite a while and should make more use of.

Alexander came over today. We won’t see him again until
after Easter – he is the stay-at-home parent, and his sons’ school holiday is
about to begin. And Greek Helen is going, with most of her family, to
Thessaloniki tomorrow, likewise not to be seen until after Easter. (Archie is lingering here for a couple of days
and will come to lunch with us on Friday.) I feel somewhat bereft.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Another fairly fraught day. It started with a dental appt,
and tomorrow will start with another, this time for an implant, a new
experience for me and surely far too expensive at my time of life. Greek Helen
covered/will cover home base on both occasions.

Then I had an email from Microsoft about renewing my subscription
to Office. I did that a couple of days ago – it turned out I had to log on again
and install the damn thing. You’d think it could all have been packed into one
process. All the money, time and trouble have wrought no noticeable change in
the program I use daily.

We went out to lunch at a Japanese place, seriously good,
near the Kings Theatre – Helen and I and her three boys (for Mungo is safely
home from Beirut) and a dear friend. That wasn’t fraught, it was fun.

After I wrote to you yesterday, I got another picture from
another dear person, this time with no embargo attached about showing it to
you, so here it is, Hellie and our unborn great-grandchild. It’s due in early
June, I believe. Getting plumper and more viable by the day:

Tannehill is coming on nicely. I should divide it at the
underarms tomorrow if dentistry doesn’t flatten me. And this week’s skein looks
seriously diminished.

I have successfully charted the Museum Sweater, and made a
small start at a colour scheme, with pencils. The colour arrangement is rather
interesting, and very un-Fair Isle.

There are three pairs of colours, and they stay faithful to
each other throughout: Pair A and Pair B for the lozenges, and Pair C for the
peeries. But there’s more:

1Pair A and Pair B keep changing places with each
other. If one row of lozenges is striped A.B,A,B,A the next one will be
B,A,B,A,B.

2And furthermore, the “X”’s have the light colours
of each pair as the pattern colour, while the lozenges, beside them in the same
row, have the dark colours as pattern.

I look forward, as I’ve said, to seeing how all this will
work with my colours.

It occurred to me last night that I can attempt some
corrugated ribbing one day soon for my weekend stint on the swatch-sweater.
Since it’s not meant to pull in, it won’t interrupt the flow of things. The
point of the experiment in that case will be to see whether I can stand
knitting it.

Monday, March 27, 2017

Back to Tannehill. My ambition is a skein a week.

Here’s where the swatch-scarf stands. I don’t know why the
sheet it’s lying on has turned blue – that doesn’t augur well for the other
colours. Quite apart from the patterns, I like the way it looks as an object,
just lying about. I think I mean that the colours seem to be working well
together.

I look forward to trying the Museum
Sweater pattern next. I made a (false) start on charting it today – I thought
there were 15 rows in the borders; there are 17, plus a single-colour row
between border and peerie. It turns out that the other Raveller who knit this
sweater, other than Maureen, that is, has posted lots of pictures, one of which
is a close up of a single repeat of the patterns from which charting will be
easy. I’ll resume tomorrow.

There are five colours in the sweater – six, if I use two
new colours for the peeries instead of repeating one from the border. It will
be interesting to see how my colours work with this pattern. Once I have
charted it in black and white, I’ll try another colour chart, using the
computer this time.

If you peer, you can see that I have lined up the centre
stitch of an “O” in my first border pattern with the centre stitch of an “X” in
the second. The effort is entirely wasted because the two patterns have
different stitch counts. It will be fun to stagger the lozenges properly in the
Museum Sweater.

Non-knit

Two dear people have sent me entirely different but equally
amusing photographs of themselves this evening – both with a warning attached
that I am not to include them here. I will sadly obey.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

Thanks for comments. I should have thought of
knitting-back-backwards. Cam, (comment yesterday) your discovery of it at the
age of seven is indeed impressive, as I am glad to hear your aunts
acknowledged. I have never progressed very far with it.

I’ve had a jolly Laetare Sunday, but, perhaps predictably,
not a very productive one. And there’s a long way to go.

I hope I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.

Non-knit

We watched the 1950’s film of The Importance of Being Ernest
at midday before sinking into a post-prandial stupor. It’s really rather good. It
reminded me of how much I adored Joan Greenwood – Whiskey Galore/Tight Little
Island, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and much else. In 1953-4, she appeared on the
stage in NY in TS Eliot’s “Confidential Clerk” which I had seen during its
first few days, in the Edinburgh Festival of 1953, not many months before.

I went to see it again, that winter, with DB, who, as far as
I know, is still alive. I remember that during the interval/intermission, the
women were grumbling: “I can’t understand a word she says”. And the men didn’t seem to mind that and were full of enthusiasm.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

It was a rather fraught day. Fair Isle knitting does not
consort well with constant interruption. Still, I got another border pattern
done. I don’t care for it much. You’ll see, soon.

All this talk of the J&S-Shetland-Museum sweater – the
one you knit, MaureeninFargo, although I hadn’t grasped that until today – has
made me wonder whether I should try to see what can be made of that, using my
colours. I’m pretty sure it would be easy to chart it, using the illustration
in Mucklestone’s book and the ones posted by Maureen and the one other Raveller
who has attempted it.

I think maybe that will be the next experiment for my
swatch-scarf. Only one lozenge-pattern per row, of course, and perhaps even a
different peerie.

There’s a passage in Meg’s introduction to her Fair Isle
cardigan in “Knitting” which baffles me. Maybe you can help. She is writing
about the problem of what to do with a Fair Isle, knit bottom-up, when you get
to the armholes. Work back and forth, which will involve purling? Or steek, and
go on knitting in the round? Both solutions are found on Shetland, she says.

Then this: “Designers Lizbeth Upitis and Joyce Williams knit
forwards and backwards from the underarm up – no steeks, no cutting, no purling
back in pattern.”

What does that mean? The only Third Way I can think of is to
cut the yarn at the end of every row and push everything back to the other end
of the needle. That is indeed possible, but I wouldn’t describe it as “knitting
forwards and backwards”.

Here’s my husband’s Tannehill, dark line and all:

In my wanderings last night, I wound up on Jimmy Bean’s
madtosh DK page. I haven’t been there for quite a while. A great many of the
colours were unfamiliar, and goodness! how wonderful! No wonder Tannehill went
under, if they bring out new colours at that rate. It occurred to me to wonder whether
the pattern for my leftovers, perhaps supplemented by one or two skeins of
new-and-wonderful colours, might be this, which you’ve seen before:

It is written for 4-ply (sport weight, that would be, I think, more or less) in one size only. But it might not
even have to be converted, as that one size is distinctly petite. Maybe in DK,
it would come out about right. If conversion is necessary, I don’t think it
would be too difficult.

Now I must go and put the clocks forward, and put some cider
on ice for tomorrow….

Friday, March 24, 2017

I had to go down to Tesco today for this and that. I bought
my cider to drink on Sunday – the mid-Lent break. It’s perhaps a bit dangerous to
have it in the house untouchable for a whole day and a half, but I think I’m up
to it. I was there in the car, and it’s heavy. I often stop at Tesco on the way
back from Mass – but they have been known to run out of Weston’s Vintage on a
Sunday, and I drink no other.

So it’s here.

I had another good day with Tannehill. The third skein has
been joined in. I think I have earned my weekend of Fair Isle.

I didn’t take a picture. I kept putting it off because I was
going to knit a few more rounds, and then, of course, the light was gone. But
tomorrow I won’t knit it at all, and the light promises to be good, so there we
are. And on Sunday the clocks go forward and we’ll have even more light.

Madtosh is notorious for having skeins of different values. This
third skein of Tannehill is very dark, and has produced the sharpest
colour-change line I’ve ever had. You’ll see. I’m not going to worry about it.
My husband doesn’t go out and about. What he wants is a cosy DK sweater asap.

MaureeninFargo has written to me to say that she didn’t
adapt Meg’s video-vest to make her own cardigan (as I said yesterday) – Meg did
it herself. It’s the cover picture, indeed, of her book “Knitting”. In view of
recent events, you may be surprised to hear that I found that book exactly
where it belonged, with EZ and Meg’s other books. It sounds from what she says
there as if vest and cardigan evolved simultaneously.

Kristie (comment yesterday), my hesitation about knitting
the museum-quality sweater for which Jamieson&Smith offer a “temporarily
unavailable” kit, would not be the knitting of a whole Fair Isle sweater in
fingering weight. That’s fun. It
would be the fiddliness of knitting all those different lozenges, and of
knitting the peerie pattern as the v-neck edging.

Meg says, in the introduction to the cardigan pattern in “Knitting”:

“Those who have experienced the excitement and contentment
of knitting a true Fair Isle pattern need not be told of the pure pleasure
involved. Elizabeth once described Fair Isle knitting as ‘painting with a
different color in each hand and never having to rinse the brushes.’ For me it
is like going into a trance.”

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Another good day with Tannehill. I should join in the third
skein tomorrow, and I’m not a million miles from the point where I separate
back and front at the underarm. I think a picture would be a good idea,
although I don’t trust it to do justice to the beautiful colour. Tomorrow.

I spent some time wandering around the internet last night,
while waiting for the nurse to come. I discovered that Jamieson & Smith offer
a kit based on a particular sweater in the Shetland Museum which is illustrated in
Mucklestone’s book and which I mentioned only a couple of days ago – the one in
which the pattern in every lozenge is different.

The J&S text says that in the original sweater, the
different-ness extends to the back, but that they have simplified things by
making the back and front identical, lozenge-wise. They phrase it more
elegantly.

The odd thing is that this kit is “currently unavailable”.
Why on earth? They must have the pattern, and it uses nothing but shades of their own
Shetland Heritage yarn.

I haven’t advanced either with colouring-in the squares in Excel
or downloading the allegedly free copy of Stitch and Motif Maker. The idea is
to spend a happy weekend knitting the next 15-row border pattern, and another
peerie, onto the swatch-scarf. The border has already been planned, and coloured
however clumsily with pen and pencil. Then when it is finished, I hope it will
itself prompt the next experiment and that’s when I can try colouring by
computer.

Ravelry suggested the other day looking at your friends’
projects if you find yourself drained of inspiration. That’s how I found MaureeninFargo’s
Fair Isle sweaters – her husband is wearing the vest Meg designed for
Knitter’s magazine and also published with accompanying video. Then Maureen
must have transformed the pattern into a cardigan for herself. The result is
rather impressive.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Another anxious evening, waiting for a nurse to come and see
to my husband’s catheter. I think the last time this happened was on the eve of
the EYF – not long ago – and I was afraid I wouldn’t get there. He has been
weak and droopy of late.

I steadily knit Tannehill in the intervals of my nursing
duties. Today, I must confess with some embarrassment, I weighed the ball of
yarn several times, until finally I got it down under 50 grams, therefore half
way through, therefore entitled to half of the 12% I have assigned to each
skein, for sidebar purposes, on the strength of Sweater Wizard’s estimate of
how much yarn is needed in all.

(There are 46 days in Lent, so, for that one, each day earns
2%, with a bonus 1% every Tuesday when another week is completed.)

Thank you, Southern Gal, for suggesting Excel for my Fair
Isle charting. I don’t think I even knew it offered colour. I use Excel
extensively for the Income Tax, and for a Christmas list now spanning many
years, but nothing else.

And I also seem to have discovered that Stitch and Motif
Maker is available as a free download. I haven’t done it yet, because I
discovered that on the iPad and thought I wanted the program here on the
laptop. But I’m not sure that’s true, now that I write that sentence down. We’ll
see, tomorrow. I want to be able to print my little designs and keep them
together in some sort of portfolio.

But I can print from the iPad.

Shandy, I’m sure you’re right about the importance of having
an overall colour. I’ve gone for that dark green you mention, and will need to
order more of it rather soon.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Lent

Three weeks done – nearly half-way. Thursday is in fact the
half-way point. Rachel and I agreed on the phone last week that this is where
Lent gets a bit dreary. One skips through the first few days, sustained by a
virtuous glow. But now it just seems a long, long way to the end. Laetare
Sunday, however, looms: the mid-Lent day off. It will be very welcome.

Other non-knit

Mungo sent Helen, and she sent me, this enchanting mosaic he
saw in a Beirut museum, of the infant Alexander the Great having a bath.

Knitting

Tannehill progresses. There’s much to be said for boring
& DK, if you’re keen to get something done.

I continue to think about Fair Isle. Here are the yarns
chosen for next weekend’s experiment:

And here they are in tonal form. I think I’m getting the
idea.

Thank you very much, Theresa and Karen, for your comments
yesterday about my first attempt. At the moment, I am far too impatient to try
again with something completely different, to take your advice. But you have
persuaded me that it would be a good idea, when I have more or less decided on
the motifs and the arrangement I want to go forward with, to knit them together
and consider the total effect, as Mucklestone has done for the admirable “Mix
and Match” swatches towards the end of her book.

I’m in no hurry – maybe that’s the secret of happy
swatching. And the longer the better, as far as the scarf is concerned. Maybe I’d better go ahead and knit this vest before I’m too old to pull it off.

I’ve bought myself sets of coloured pens and pencils (such
as everybody needs for their colouring books these days – a most unexpected
enthusiasm) and I have been trying to chart the pattern I have chosen in the
colours I’m going to use. But the colours of the pens and pencils are pretty
remote from the colours of the yarns and it doesn’t work very well. I wish I
could find Stitch and Motif Maker.

Monday, March 20, 2017

I finished the motif and added a peerie and returned with
some reluctance to Tannehill:

I am fully swept up in Mucklestone’s enthusiasm for
swatching Fair Isle. I like this first result better than I thought I would
when I was half-way through, except I don’t entirely like that yellow in the
middle. Next time I’ll try a pattern with the dark colours in the background
and the pattern in light. Kate Davies in her Macrihanish pattern alternates two
such patterns, light and dark, with peeries in between. She uses only six
colours altogether. Maybe I’m trying to squeeze in too many:

I’m not going to “design” the scarf, beyond centering the
motifs and separating border patterns with peeries. I think the colours will
hold it together. I might as well try different peeries each time, too. I think
I had vaguely hoped that the stitch repeats in 15-row border patterns would all
be the same, so that each repeat could be different (as I read somewhere that
traditional Fair Isles are) and still line up. But they’re not.

I bought Mucklestone’s book, “200 Fair Isle Designs”. It arrived today. It offers a good deal more than the title
promises – general instructions on all aspects of Fair Isle knitting, to begin
with. The patterns are photographed life-size, with an accompanying chart and
another chart offering an alternative colour-way. In some cases the pattern is
also photographed with another pattern from elsewhere in the book, showing how
they might be combined. In others, a chart shows how a border pattern can become an all-over.

She illustrates a stunning sweater from the Shetland Museum
which seems to have a different pattern in every lozenge – that is, the “O’s”
of the famous OXO – even within a row. And the peerie pattern in between
reappears as the neck edging. Genius.

And speaking of books, thank you, Chloe (comment yesterday)
for suggesting that good old Ravelry will show me the patterns in Sally
Melville’s “Styles”. I am mystified by the absence of that book. I haven’t
looked at it for a long time, so it is unlikely to have been left lying around
somewhere (although that is possible). I will keep looking where it belongs,
with the Melville’s on the “design” shelf or with the outsize knitting books
elsewhere. Maybe it will re-materialise the way Gaughan’s cable book did recently.

The Tannehill sweater is coming along nicely. It can’t help
being boring, and the yarn is beautiful.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

I decided that I might as well start the swatch scarf, so I
did.

It was an interesting experience. The 12” circular needle is
somewhat awkward, but not excruciatingly so. I didn’t have much trouble with
the pattern, as I did in Hazel Tindall’s class, but my left hand didn’t behave
as well as it might, and the first half of the 15-row OXO motif I launched into
was productive of a good deal of tension across the shoulders. The second half
went better.

I’m within two rows of finishing the motif. I’ll try to show
it to you tomorrow. I don’t think I’m entirely satisfied with the way the
colours are working together. I can see how this might get to be a lot of fun.

When this motif is finished, and maybe a peerie to round it
off, I’ll wind another skein of Tannehill and revert to that.

Thank you very much for your help with my madtosh leftovers,
and apologies, Tamar, for not giving you credit for the suggestion that I look
at Kaffe. And I can see myself getting swept away by the temptation to buy a
few more skeins to go with the leftovers I’ve already got. Something has got to
be a main colour. I’ll pay close attention to how many skeins are consumed by
my husband’s sweater. Composition Book Grey and Roast Hatch Chillies are the
two I’ve got the most of.

Non-knit

Helen’s middle son Mungo is going to Beirut tomorrow. We’re
all a bit nervous (except for Mungo). He is doing Arabic at Oxford, and his
college has given him a travel grant to spend a week in a place where it is
spoken. As far as I can understand it, however, he is learning classical Arabic
which won’t get him very far with the spoken language.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

My husband has now been four months home from hospital.

Today was a better day – than last Saturday, I mean.
Scotland beat Italy by a tidy score, without letting them score anything at
all. AND IRELAND BEAT ENGLAND! That
one was on a knife-edge until the concluding seconds. England had been pretty
well taking it for granted that they would win, and thereby win the Grand Slam,
so-called, which would have meant they had beaten every other nation in the
tournament. Pride goeth before a fall, not infrequently.

The tournament is now over for this year. We came fourth.

The Tannehill sweater was perfect for rugby knitting, round
and round in st st. I got a fair amount done, and am nearly finished with the
first skein. It’s lovely stuff. Why did they give it up?

I thought a bit about what to do with all my madetosh leftovers.
And you’re quite right, Beverly, about “Tart” – I had forgotten that single
skein of red I got to make facings for Archie’s sweater. I’ve found it (I hope –
it’s unlabelled) and added it to the pile. I’ve always rather fancied this,
from a VK of about 50 years ago:

It’s written for a 4-ply yarn, but I think could be converted
to DK without too much difficulty. And I think there would be enough “Tart” for
the smallest stripe. On the reverse of this image, that is, on the preceding page of the magazine, is a sleeveless Fair Isle cardigan-vest by Kaffe, his first published pattern, I believe.

And he is a good idea too, Beverly, as a source of inspiration, except that he so often uses far
more colours than I have to hand. I wanted to have a look at Sally Melville’s
“Styles” but I can’t find it. I haven’t
looked at it for years, have never knit from it, but that’s no excuse for its
not being where it ought to be, on the “design” shelf with the other Melville’s.

Beverly, you’re right, too, about recording FO’s in Ravelry.
My practice is to date the pattern leaflet and put it, or my notes, or at any
rate something, in a manilla folder. When it gets too full for comfort, I
transfer the contents into a box file and start again. I have been doing this
since sometime in the ‘70’s. But it’s a bit messy and sometimes incomplete.
Ravelry would be much more secure.

I took a guess and looked today in the box file that runs
from the late 70’s through the early 80’s, and found several things from my
Fair Isle Phase. The notes for two of them had, as a notation of the needles
used, “9 and 11”. That takes you back. 9=3.75mm so I’ll try both that and 4mm.
I’ve got short circulars for both those sizes. Are they so short that my hands
will hurt?

So I’m ready to attempt the Feral Knitter’s swatch-scarf.
She suggests 128 stitches on a 16” circular. Any day now.

Friday, March 17, 2017

American holidays which afford shopkeepers means of making
money, are insinuating themselves more and more into the British calendar –
Mother’s Day, Halloween. Even Easter seems to me to have suffered a new and excessive accession
of chocolate rabbits in recent years. And Christmas, which was scarcely noticed
in Scotland when I came in the 50’s, has become unspeakable.

(All the holidays I mention were observed in Britain before
they became commercialized. But they were observed without all that stuff which now fills the shops for weeks in advance.)

But today is one we are spared. Each nation celebrates its
own patron saint – Andrew, David, George. Although the English are not all that
interested in George. Patrick is a bigger deal than any of them – but only
in Ireland. Today was a bank holiday there, and everybody in Dublin is drunk,
but the rest of us can go quietly and thankfully about our business with no need to drink green
beer. (Rachel’s younger son Joe is in Dublin for the match tomorrow, so I have information
about conditions there at first hand.)

Knitting

Kathleen and Mary Lou are right about the Knitter’s Almanac
(comments yesterday). I knew you were right as soon as I read your comment,
Kathleen. The sweater in question is EZ’s “open-collared pullover”, October’s offering.
I think I followed her instructions all the way through, and the result is
highly satisfactory.

I got on nicely with Tannehill today. The ribbing is
finished, the increase row done, the body commenced.

I am soon going to have quite a lot of left-over madtosh DK:
Composition-Book Grey, from Archie’s sweater; Whiskey Barrel; Roast Hatch
Chillies; and, soon, Tannehill – if the Sweater Wizard’s estimate of how much I
will use in this sweater is accurate. How to combine them all?

I have gone on thinking about Fair Isle. The swatch-scarf
can serve several useful purposes. Colour, of course, and the provision of an
accurate gauge swatch -- one must calculate the length with care so that the
pattern does something sensible when back and front meet at the shoulder. And
in addition, I have forgotten what needle size I use. I know that I knit
tightly when I am stranding two colours, and therefore use a larger needle than
I otherwise would for Shetland Jumper Weight. But how large?

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Here it is:

It is in many respects carelessly and rather sloppily done.
I am lucky that it has turned out so well. It’s awfully cosy, despite being
only half a brioche. Perhaps I can wear it the next time I go for a Serious
Walk.

I had a feeling, as I was doing the plackets and collar,
that EZ has such a neckline treatment somewhere. I couldn’t find it in the
indices of her books. I knit a sweater once in fairly light-weight yarn on
which I’ve done it, and my dim memory is that EZ was guiding my steps. I got it
out today, to help me judge whether I had knit enough collar on the new one –
and find that the collar and plackets are edged with i-cord. It looks very
neat, and points again to EZ.

I had time for a bit more ribbing. Sweater Wizard would have
me knit this sweater – a bog-standard DK long-sleeved v-necked pullover – in four
pieces. And I know that lots of designers maintain that seams provide stability.
But I am knitting this one in the round until the sleeve-holes start, then back
and forth, like it or not. The ribbing looks very nice, but progress is slow. Sweater Wizard
wants 22 rows of it. 22 rounds, in my case.

My tentative plan is to plod on like this until I finish the
ribbing, and then maybe allow myself two evenings a week for frivolity – such as
a Fair Isle swatch-scarf.

The bit of Meg’s video that I watched last night was a bit dispiriting.
She was explaining the best cast-on for corrugated rib. The long-tail cast on,
as I’m sure you know, can either be done by knitting into a loop around one’s
left thumb (that’s how I do it) or by means of a cat’s-cradle construction into
which the needle dips. That’s how Real Knitters like Meg and Franklin do it.

For corrugated rib, one doesn’t employ the long-tail cast on
but a variant which will only have made sense to those who use the cat’s-cradle
method. I could learn, I suppose. And anyway, corrugated rib isn’t essential.

Non-knit

Dreadful as are the events unfolding in the US of A, I am
afraid I still feel even sorrier for Scotland. You’ve got the hope that there
will still be free elections in four years’ time. Less than that, now – three years
and eight months. But if Ms Sturgeon succeeds in wresting apart the United
Kingdom, undoing more than 300 years of history (since the Act of Union), there will be no hope at all of putting things right, ever.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

That was a more productive day on the knitting front. I have
finished sewing the half-brioche sweater together and knitting the plackets. I
am maybe half-way through the collar. There are a good many loose ends to tidy
away when that is done. Even so, I might finish tomorrow.

Which reminds me of another tidbit from Hazel Tindall. When
you knit Fair Isle, you wind up with a fringe of ends up one side seam (on the
inside) where you have attached a new colour every couple of rows. She said
that it is all right to tidy and secure the loose ends by knotting. That’s what
I’ve always done and would have continued doing, whatever she said, but I am
enormously gratified to have her approval.

She didn’t press her way of knitting on us, although she was
happy to demonstrate. She did say at the beginning, though, when we were all
casting on our mug haps, that it is easier to join the work without twisting
if, at that point, the stitches are on only two needles. Quite true, it turns
out. I have always changed direction after casting on a sock, and ribbed one or
even two rows back and forth before joining, but perhaps henceforth I’ll do it
her way.

I enjoyed the beginning of Meg’s Fair Isle video, and hope
to watch some more this evening. I left her about to tell me how to cast on in
a way that would stop corrugated rib from flaring outwards.

Non-knit

Alexander came to see us, as often on a Wednesday. He is as
depressed as I am at the prospect of another independence referendum – two more
years of anxiety and bad temper, and then ---

He thinks that so profound a change should require a bit
more than a simple majority, like constitutional amendments in the US. I’m
inclined to agree.

He and his family will be here for the match against Italy
on Saturday, the last day of the Six Nations tournament. But he and I are both
almost more interested in Ireland-England at the end of the afternoon. Can
Ireland stop the juggernaut?

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

That’s a fortnight of Lent disposed of – nearly 1/3. And
Laetare Sunday is less than a fortnight distant. That’s when we relax for a
day.

C. and I had a good walk, around Bonaly Reservoir this morning. The weather was bright and fairly vernal, but with a terrific wind, We walked
for an hour, and covered perhaps 2 ½ miles. Not much, but there were two steep
ascents involved. I feel much the better for it.

But I was in no state for much knitting when I got back. I’ve done some more
ribbing, and must take care that the half-brioche sweater, so nearly finished,
doesn’t slip away.

I watched some of Hazel Tindall’s video last night – it’s a
two-disk set, but I can’t find the second disk or the box. Tonight I hope to
watch a bit of Meg’s Fair Isle Vest video.
I was right: Hazel knits around with three needles, rather than four or
five.

I had a nice time just now reading about what a wonderful
time everybody had at the EYF, and looking at pictures of their hauls. My own
acquisitions look positively restrained in comparison with many.

Non-knit

Jen, and Isabella (comments yesterday): my very happy weekend
in Shetland happened not long before the (first) independence referendum. There
was a substantial movement – posters in the airport, etc – in favour of the
idea that if Scotland as a whole voted for independence, and the northern
islands voted for union, they would be allowed to remain in the UK. They are
not quite Scotland, up there; they have an interesting separate history.

But you can imagine how far they got with that idea, in the
Scottish parliament.

The situation now seems to me rather parallel. We were promised last time that there wouldn’t
be another referendum for a generation.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Today wasn’t as productive. There are still a few inches to
sew together on the final stretch of the half-brioche side-and-sleeve seam. I
fetched Vogue Knitting from its place on the shelf in preparation for possibly
adding a collar – I think it’s the best book I have for such details. I
discovered in it, accidentally, that if you are adding a placket or collar of a
different colour, you should pick up the stitches in the original colour and
then switch. In this case, the Roast Hatch Chillies are there in the background
all along, but the Whiskey Barrel predominates so strongly that I had probably
better take Vogue’s advice.

I did some more ribbing on my husband’s sweater. He is of
respectable circumference, and the Sweater Wizard wants 22 rounds of rib, so it’ll
take a while.

And I read Alice Starmore’s Fair Isle book. It is extremely
thorough, extremely Starmore. She, too, is keen on swatching and warns of the
unexpected results that can arise when colours are combined.

On securing steeks: Peggy, you must bear in mind what Mary
Lou wisely pointed out – that leaving a steek unsecured depends on your having
used Shetland yarn, which is very “sticky”. Starmore cuts cheerfully into an
unsecured steek, but insists that you hem it firmly down later. Mucklestone,
towards the end of her lesson on securing steeks, does mention the possibility
of doing nothing. Nor does she hem the facing later.

I'd better find out what Meg recommends, in that video I've got, before I decide.

Non-knit

I am going on a walk tomorrow with our niece, while the
cleaner is here. I used to walk with her quite often, five miles or so. I wonder
how much I can manage now – it’s been a long time.

I am greatly distressed to learn that there is to be another
referendum on Scottish independence.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Today was quite productive on the knitting front. I finished
the first of the long seams on the half-brioche sweater, enabling me to try it
on, after a fashion. I think it’s going to fit rather well. I have embarked on
the second seam. It’s slow work. I’m doing something between mattress stitch
and a simple overcast.

I got a bit anxious about not having any actual knitting to
hand – unusually, I don’t even have a pair of socks on the go. My Tannehill
swatch has emerged from the wash, so I took gauge from it again (virtually
unchanged) and then ran the figures through the Sweater Wizard and printed out
a pattern for my husband’s plain-vanilla v-neck sweater. And cast it on. The SW
is an excellent program – it’s a pity nobody has picked it up and run with it.
It’s a pity computers keep changing all the time and rendering good programs
obsolete. Like the British Quicken.

It is a great pleasure, knitting with madtosh DK. I showed my husband the swatch, and he
thoroughly approves of “Tannehill”. And I’ve got plenty. It’s been
discontinued, so that’s an important fact. (The Sweater Wizard estimates how
much you’ll need.) So we’re set fair.

I’ve gone on thinking about Fair Isle. I can’t knit
Alexander his vest without the Calcutta Cup, but I can knit a swatch-scarf and
at the moment, fully intend to do so. I might even make it long enough to give
to him, thus using up all the yarn. I’ll keep the ball bands carefully. Here is
my yarn:

And here it is with the iPad’s “tonal” mask applied. I still
don’t know what that achieves:

I think my plan for the immediate future, once the
half-brioche is finished, will be to have my husband’s sweater as No. One WIP,
with perhaps two days a week for frivolity: either Mary Lou’s baby sweater, or
the swatch-scarf.

I wish I had asked Hazel Tindall exactly how she knits. I
know that a knitting belt is always involved, and I suspect, from something she
said, that she knits on three needles rather than four (or five). So knitting a
sock would be exactly the same as knitting a sweater, except that she’d finish
a needle and have to switch over much sooner. I’ve got her knitting video but
have never watched much of it. Some of the answer may well be there.

I’ve also got Meg’s Fair Isle Vest video and have never even
unwrapped it.

I have been surprised, going carefully back through “A
Shetlander’s Fair Isle Graph Book”, to see that a great many of the patterns
change both colours in the same row. I thought that was never done. Hazel said
that she prefers not to.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

We lost. It was horrible.

A fortnight ago England could scarcely cope with Italy.
(Italy are not terribly good, and almost always lose.) Today they ran rings
around us from the beginning. I think I heard the man say that never in the
long history of the Calcutta Cup has either side scored as many points as
England did today. It was a bad-tempered match as well.

So now I must pull myself together and think about the
future, after adding yesterday’s purchases to my already-over-lengthy queue. I
have finished the jigsaw puzzle of constructing the top of the half-brioche
sweater, and have embarked on the long, straight seams of the sides and the
underarm. I was constantly afraid of some egregious mistake, like the time I
sewed the Sous Sous together with one piece upside down, but I think I’m all
right.

During the match I swatched for the plain-vanilla v-necked
sweater in madtosh DK “Tannehill”which I’ve been meaning to knit for my husband.
I’ve got lots of madtosh DK swatches, but they lack reference to any particular
needle size. I won’t want to start for a week or so, when I have finally and
for real finished the half-brioche, so I
think I will take careful note of the present gauge (and needle size) and then
wash it (by machine, since it is meant to be superwash) and try again.

Hazel Tindall’s class

We were meant to knit mug haps – little cosies to put around
our mugs of tea. I don’t think anyone finished. I certainly didn’t, although I
intend to. It didn’t prevent the class from being delightful and of great use
and interest.

Hazel provided us with a table-ful of little yarn
butterflies from which to choose our colours, and spoke most interestingly on
the subject of colour. I still don’t think I grasp the point about colour
values, and why it is useful to photograph our yarn choices in black and white.
Helen is taking a class at the Leith School of Art on Painting and Drawing (for
the sake of designing mosaics) and says that the teacher has recommended that procedure.
Mucklestone recommended it, too.

The mug hap, above the initial ribbing, consists of two
repeats of a very simple 10-stitch 9-row Fair Isle pattern. I was distressed at
how often I lost hold and had to rip back and try again. I was pleased with the
result of my first repeat of the pattern, however, and decided to do the second
with the same four colours, differently arranged. I don’t think I’m going to
like it nearly as well. I’ll show you soon, I hope.

There were moments, despite my mental clumsiness, when I had
the old feeling of exhilaration – why do I ever do any other sort of knitting,
when I could be knitting Fair Isle?

I hope, after all this thought, that I’ll go ahead and knit
a swatch-scarf, as recommended by the Feral Knitter.

I might add that Hazel doesn’t like circular needles – too much
time is wasted coaxing the stitches over the join. She uses a knitting belt even
for socks and mug haps.

Friday, March 10, 2017

It was wonderful.

It was brilliantly organised, and there were plenty of
stewards, so that the capacity crowd – this event is obviously a huge success –
scarcely suffered. It began when we were queuing before nine to get in for the
class-attenders’ private hour at the market. People passed among us inspecting
our class tickets and dispensing golden wrist-bands. All we had to do when the
magic hour struck was walk in past the gate-keeper holding a hand aloft.

I have never seen such a market – and I’ve been to Stitches.
Admittedly, not to Rhinebeck. It would be interesting to compare.

Several of you spoke to me (on account of my Thanks Obama
bag) – that was nice. The first one, while we were still in that queue outside,
had a Strachur Primary School bag of her own. That’s where Alexander and Ketki’s
sons began their education, on Loch Fyne. Other people congratulated me on the
bag for its own sake.

I didn’t wear knitting, but instead my new sweat shirt,
whose only previous outing had been on Chrstmas Day:

And, sure enough! I met an Oberlin knitter. She was actually
in Hazel Tindall’s class! If we can get Arthur Dent’s Infinite Improbability
Drive to work that well at Twickenham tomorrow…

In the market: I bought the colours I couldn’t supply from
stash, to make up the colour scheme for Alexander’s Fair Isle vest.

I decided against the Brooklyn Tweed "Arbor" yarn for the Nila pattern, beautiful as it is. It cost something like £13 a skein, and I needed something like 15 skeins. That's too much, considering that I was doubtful about the pattern. But I can tell you that Jared was there, first thing in the morning and still there when I re-attacked the market after lunch. He looks younger than I expected. I also saw Gudrun Johnston (this year's patron of Shetland Wool Week) and Kate Davies and Carol Feller, among others.

I didn’t buy Baa Ram Ewe’s yarn for the shorter Ancasta,
either. I didn’t like it quite well enough, face to face.

I did buy the Samite for Nancy’s Vest. I regretted that
purchase almost as soon as made. I chose what I thought was a dusty red. It
turned brown as soon as I had paid for it, but looks perhaps slightly better
this evening.

I bought two skeins of Sweet Georgia sock yarn (=washable)
for Mary Lou’s Pollywog Popover pattern from Drop Dead Easy Knits, one solid,
one variegated. I’ll have an incentive to do that one soon, before the great-grandchildren
start school. And I added an (expensive) mini-skein set also from Sweet
Georgia. Mini-skeins were everywhere, as expected.

Hazel Tindall’s class was wonderful. She is delightful. I’ll
have to write more about that tomorrow. For now, I’ll just tell you that Hazel
Tindall doesn’t finish a steek – neither reinforcing it before cutting, nor
hemming the facing in any way. That’s if she’s just knitting a sweater for
herself. If she’s aiming at a competition, she takes more trouble. For the
judges’ sake – the steek doesn’t need it.

So now I’ve got the yarn, and I’ve taken a class with Hazel
Tindall. All we need is the Calcutta Cup.

Thursday, March 09, 2017

My husband is having some sort of trouble with his catheter.
We’re waiting for a nurse.

Otherwise, I’m all set for tomorrow.

Last minute excitement: the EYF emailed me yesterday about a
new yarn from Blacker called Samite which will be launched tomorrow. Shetland wool, “Ahimsa”
silk, Gotland wool. It sounded sort of lace-weight from the blurb, and I even
thought of doing a Houlland (from the Haps book, like Shandy) – but in fact,
when yardage is compared to weight, it is far too heavy.

What it does match, almost precisely, is the yarn for Nancy’s
Vest. So I shall look at it with that in mind.

“Ahimsa” silk is what happens when the moths have been
allowed to grow up and emerge from their cocoons. I would guess that it’s
cheaper than the real thing, when the moths are put to death unborn to preserve
the cocoon intact. But Blacker crowns the blurb with a wonderful piece of
silliness: “We’re thinking about the future of our planet and investing in
Ahimsa silk guarantees that there will still be moths to make the silk of the
future.”

As if the Chinese, who have been farming silk worms for
millennia, hadn’t thought about that.

I’ve finished the basic knitting of the half-brioche, and
have made quite good progress with assembly. How old-fashioned it feels, to be
sewing knitting together piece by piece! There are only the usual four pieces,
but the shoulder strap ensures that there’s lots of sewing.

It’s fun having more knitting to look forward to, placket
and collar, as I toil on.

Now I must go polish my shoes and worry about my husband. I’ll
report tomorrow if I am strong enough.

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

I think I am all packed for the EYF, except for the iPad
which I will add at the last moment for the sake of its camera (Hazel T.
suggests a camera) and the notes I have made about sweater’s-worths of yarn. I
found some knitter’s graph paper of my own right here, published by the
Schoolhouse Press.

I also found the Sweater Wizard, and it seems to work on
this computer. I don’t know which version of Windows I’ve got – not the latest.
I can run Lotus Organizer but not, alas, Quicken. Maddeningly, I can’t find
Stitch and Motif Maker. It’s far less important, but it’s still frustrating. It
must be there somewhere. Helen popped in while I was searching, and was
surprised that my computer even had a disk drive. But surely…

The EYF says that Jared will be available for meeting and
greeting and signing his new, expensive book – for an hour and a half on Saturday.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that he
won’t be at his stand on Friday. But probably.

What an extraordinary piece of luck, I keep reflecting, that
this wonderful event is right here on my doorstep, considering how constrained
my life now is. I would have found it very difficult even to get to Glasgow.
There was a not-entirely-successful attempt to do something at Stirling a few
years ago. I signed up and paid, but when it got to the time, found that I
couldn’t get away from my responsibilities after all.

As for the half-brioche, I finished the body of the sleeve,
as hoped, and am well forward with the shoulder strap. After that is a narrow
piece which goes around the back of the neck. I’d have polished that off with
ease by the weekend, were it not for the EYF and the Calcutta Cup.

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

It wasn’t a particularly productive day on the knitting
front: a supermarket sweep in the morning, my husband’s physiotherapist at
midday, a very welcome visit from an old friend in the afternoon. I think three
rows remain before I narrow the sleeve to just the shoulder strap.

Thank you for all your help about graph paper to take to
Hazel Tindall’s class. What I did was order this
little book from Amazon, which I thought could double as a notebook for taking
notes in. If it doesn’t turn up by Thursday, I’ll think
again.

While I was there, I also ordered this Knitting
Calculator. I look forward to getting acquainted with it, although I am
sure it is no substitute for the Sweater Wizard.

You’re right, of course, Maureen, that two-colour stranded
knitting pulls in no matter how conscientiously one keeps smoothing out the
right-hand needle, and the result is stitches which are pretty well square. My
little book will have knitterly rectangles, I am sure. But it doesn’t matter –
the point will surely be to use it for a quick note of a pattern or two.

Kate's "Inspired by Islay" book arrived in today's post, and is very nice indeed -- although I haven't had much time with it yet.

A blog post from Ella Gordon says that she will be at the EYF. But Jamieson & Smith (where she works) won't be, I believe. She must be coming for the Shetland Wool Week stall.

By the way, I will be carrying the "Thanks, Obama" bag which my sister brought me on the occasion of her recent visit.

Non-knit

There’s a week of Lent done. The worst is over. I am moving
into the happy state of rejoicing in how much money I’m saving and how many
heavy bottles I don’t have to carry home. And anyway it will be Laetare Sunday
any moment now.

Monday, March 06, 2017

Here’s where we are:

…with the second sleeve very nearly to the point where it
joins the body. I've also done the back, although it doesn't figure in this photograph. There is an egregious mistake in the middle of the sleeve you
see, and a less serious one in the middle of the sleeve I’m still knitting.
Miraculously, both mistakes are much less visible on the right side. Tinking
brioche is virtually impossible.

The suggestion in the photograph that the sleeve is of a
somewhat different tint to the body, is, alas, true.

I would be very grateful for your aesthetic advice. The
pattern wants only ribbing (and buttonholes) at the neck. I am thinking, as I
have said, of adding a collar. And I am thinking of doing all that in Roast
Hatch Chillies. What do you think? Would that be too violent? I’ve got plenty of both yarns – that isn’t a
consideration.

I’ve heard from Baa Ram Ewe so now I am fully equipped for
the EYF. I remind myself that it would be wiser not to buy a sweater’s worth.
We’ll see. And Nancy’s Vest might best be knit in Carol Sunday’s yarn.

I continue to watch Mary Jane Mucklestone’s Craftsy class on
the Fair Isle Vest. I am increasingly enchanted by her. What fun it would be to
go on the tours to Shetland which she leads with Gudrun Johnston! They stay at
the wonderful house -- Burrastow – where
Kristie and Kath and I stayed. One for my bucket list.

Mucklestone is devoted to swatching – not in a severe,
schoolmistress-y way, but on the unlikely grounds that it’s fun. “You might
never need to knit a garment again.” She says she knit all the swatches for her
book “200 Fair Isle Designs”. By which I am rather tempted.

I will take the FT reproduction of Hopper’s “Gas” with me to
the EYF to choose the colours I can’t supply from stash. After all this
preparation, I think I will have to cast on a swatch-scarf even after we,
predictably, lose the Calcutta Cup match on Saturday. That’s the day after the
EYF, but it would be silly not to choose the colours there, eyeball to eyeball
with the yarn, rather than wait and have to do it from a computer screen.

Here’s another job for you: I want to take squared paper
with me to Hazel Tindall’s class. She suggests it as an option. I tried the
stationery department in John Lewis yesterday: no luck. They’re busy knocking
down the St James’ Centre, so Ryman’s is gone. But I know I have a knitting book
– and probably more than one – which prints pages of empty squares. I’ve always
thought that was a slightly cheaty way to pad out a book.

But now I want to find such a book and photocopy that page.
Does anybody know what book it’s in? The chances are very good that I’ve got
it, but I hesitate to start searching blindly.

Sunday, March 05, 2017

James has gone back to Sydenham.

I had a good day – I got a couple of things done, including
unpinning the shawl. Perdita loves blocking – or rather, unblocking – lace. She
rushes to the scene as soon as she contrives to get into the room – even when
she could hardly have known that I was
blocking lace – and starts pulling out the pins. I am anxious for the shawl,
but far more anxious for her, and glad when the temptation can be removed.

I’m further on with the second sleeve of the half-brioche. I
should finish it as far as the shoulder strap tomorrow or Tuesday. I’ll try to
contrive a picture.

I got a little bit forward'er with the EYF – I’ve emailed Baa Ram
Ewe (rather late in the day) to ask how much yarn the shorter Ancasta requires;
and I’ve made a tidy list in my iPad of the yarn requirements of the various other
possibilities. Both Carol Sunday, “Nancy’s Vest”, and Jared, “Nila”
list the yarn requirements on their websites, so I haven’t had to commit myself
to buying a pattern yet.

And of course there will be gradient packs and I can always
buy 100 grams of a good sock yarn or two.

There’s news of Susan Crawford: she has finished radiotherapy
and is officially cancer-free. She will ease herself back into work next month,
and hopes to let us know a publication date for the Vintage Shetland Project
before the end of May. It might be of lugubrious interest to count the
publication dates we’ve had so far, starting with November, 2015.

I’ve retrieved from my archives the Sweater-Wizard pattern
for Alexander’s Calcutta Cup sweater of 2006, including the
Stitch-and-Motif-Maker chart with the picture of the Cup. (I wonder if those
useful programs will run on my present laptop?) Scotland also won in 2008. I
knit a sweater for Ketki that time but have entirely forgotten its nature. Is
it in the archives? If so, I went past it without noticing. 2010 was a draw –
that was when I knit a hat for Alexander and Ketki’s son James, showing half
the Cup. Alas, he lost it.

And I continue to watch Mucklestone’s interesting Craftsy
class. We’ve had four or five lessons, and haven’t even started knitting. Yarn,
colour, pattern.

Saturday, March 04, 2017

James’ son Alistair (computer science, Glasgow University)
has come over for the day and night, and they have gone out for a Chinese. So
here I am.

I did get the shawl blocked yesterday, and here it is:

It is small – I’m not going to measure again just now, but
it’s three or four inches shorter on all sides than Mrs Hunter of Unst expects.
I think it’s big enough for its purpose – to be not a fancy, kept-for-best
shawl but a useful accessory for a summer baby. I am afraid you can see a clear
line, to the right of the centre square, where I grafted it to the border.

On the other hand, this is the corner I sewed (having knit
the borders with one corner open in order to achieve garter stitch and avoid
purling). I simply overcast it, and I think the result is pretty successful.

I have gone on thinking about Fair Isle vests, and watching
Mary Jane Mucklestone’s Craftsy class on the subject. She’s got a good lesson
on colour. There are lots of examples on Ravelry of different people’s versions
of the pattern supplied with the class. I was impressed with how good almost
all of them look.

Here’s something I keep meaning to tell you: I find, in my
copy of Sheila McGregor’s Fair Isle book, a print-out of something Liz Lovick
posted in 2006. She says that in Shetland, “steek” means “stitch”, full stop.
She says that she discussed this with a wide variety of knitters there. They
were unanimous on the point, and their responses to the alternative meaning, often
unprintable.

The reason I have put this interesting document in McGregor’s
book is that Shetland knitters believe, Lovick says, that she was the first to
use the word “steek” in its modern sense.

She says that a generation ago, Shetland knitters would
either knit back and forth above the armholes, or, if they couldn’t stand
purling, would cut the yarn at the end of every row and push the stitches back
to the other end of the needle. Modern knitters, Lovick says, either do one of
those two things, or use what amounts to a steek for the armholes without using
the word.

Hazel Tindall herself used “steek” in our sense in a post to some forum or other that I read
only yesterday, so things must have changed in the last decade. It happens –
just as British knitters now speak confidently of “Kitchener stitch” which used
to be an exclusively American phrase. Thanks, I am sure, to the internet.

Thursday, March 02, 2017

Here it is, and you must agree that it looks rather wee:

I very much hope that I will get it blocked tomorrow
morning. The day often starts rather slowly, waiting for my husband’s carers to
come and help him get up. There might be time then, when I am at my liveliest
anyway.

The shawl was finished this morning, leaving behind it the problem
of what to knit for the rest of the day, once I had decided that there wasn’t
time to block it on the spot. The half-brioche sweater was at a highly
vulnerable stage, laid aside long enough that I had forgotten its little ways;
enough remaining to be done that it was a slightly daunting prospect. And other
knitterly delights were now occupying my mind.

Thus do projects gather momentum on the slippery slope to
UFO-dom.

However, I picked it up and resumed it, and all went
reasonably well. I made substantial progress on the second sleeve. After that, there
will be a lot of sewing-together and a neck placket to which I think I might
add a collar.

I printed out my e-ticket for my EYF class and put it
carefully in the bag I mean to carry that day. I have had a detailed and
comforting message from them, with a map, about how to find the back door which
will admit class attenders to the market an hour early. And they also addressed
my next question – do I have to go somewhere first to get an armband? And, if
so, where? Or can I get in on the e-ticket? The answer is, the latter.

I am most fortunate that Hazel Tindall’s class is in the
Corn Exchange. So I ought to have a generous half-hour in the market
beforehand, plus as much as I have strength for afterwards.

Shandy, you’re right that I could pretty well wing it with
the Fair Isle vest by now. Except that after reading the Feral Knitter and
Knitsonik, I am actually enthused with the idea of swatching to practice moving
colours around and seeing how they work with each other. And, Lisa, I got the
Shetlander’s Fair Isle Graph Book out and it’s even better than I remembered. Thanks for reminding me.

Non-knit

James is coming to see us tomorrow, leaving on Sunday. So I’ll
be away until then.

Wednesday, March 01, 2017

So -- that's one day of Lent down. The rest should be easy enough.

Helen has been given a grant by Creative Scotland to go to a
mosaic-orientated conference in Chicago at the end of the summer. I think it
has to do with mosaics as public art, mosaics for the community, but now I must
find out exactly.

I must be about two-thirds of the way across the Kitchener’d
seam that binds the final edge of the centre of Mrs Hunter’s shawl to the bottom
of the fourth border piece. It’s looking good, although garter stitch grafting doesn’t
have quite that magic quality of st st, where you can see a row of knit
stitches emerging from your needle.

I think what those garter-stitch-grafting instructions mean, is that for the lower
needle, having knit the previous row, you turn the needle as if to knit the next
one; whereas for the top needle, having knit the previous row, you don’t turn.
But I’m not exactly prepared to maintain that thesis in a court of law. I’m not
even absolutely sure that I’m doing it right, but it looks neat and feels
flexible.

I’m sure you’re right, Chloe, (comment yesterday) that
people make themselves unnecessarily anxious about grafting. It doesn’t help
that the first couple of stitches can be loose and awkward, before you see the
magic happening.

I remember – this isn’t entirely relevant – the first time I
knit a pair of socks. They were for my father, and I was probably 14 or 15. I
had got the idea, from casual references in books, that turning a heel was
about the most difficult thing you could do in knitting. I can still remember my
surprise when I did the first one. I just followed the instructions, and there
was a heel.

The shawl seemed rather wee, when I finally laid the two
to-be-grafted edges together and shook out the whole. Blocking will help, of
course. I wasn’t absolutely sure, until that moment, that I hadn’t, after all,
twisted the stitches around the needle when I reached the centre and finally joined
them into a circle. But that’s all right.

I’m no further forward, thinking about the Fair
Isle vest. Lisa, yes, I’ve got the Shetlander’s Fair Isle graph book. It’s
delicious. I had better get it out tomorrow and add it to my pile of resources.
Also have a look at that yarn I bought at Jamieson & Smith that day, so see
just what colours I have so far.